A commonly known type of electrical connector comprises an insulating housing having a plurality of terminal receiving cavities extending into one of its major surfaces and having a terminal in each of the cavities. Connectors of this general description may be of any one of a large number of particular types such as pin and socket type connectors, printed circuit board edge connectors or socket type connectors which are intended to receive an integrated circuit chip carrier.
In the manufacture of connectors of the type described above, it is common practice to produce the terminals in the form of a continuous strip and to assemble the terminals to the connector by means of an insertion machine which is usually of a specialized design as required by the particular type of connector housing and terminal which is assembled to the housing. The insertion machines used for these assembly operations in general feed the terminal strip along a strip feed path, sever the leading terminal of the strip from the strip, transfer the terminal to an inserting ram, and then insert the terminal into one of the cavities of the connector housing. The known types of machines used for these operations have reciprocating parts which push the terminal into the housing after it has been severed from the strip. Under some circumstances, a group of terminals may be severed from the strip and simultaneously pushed into cavities in the housing.
Machines which are used for these assembly operations must be capable of extremely high speed because of the large number of terminals in some types of connector housings and must be capable of precise feeding of the terminal along the feed path into the cavity in the housing, particularly when the terminals are extremely small and are inserted into equally small cavities in the housing. Chip carrier sockets for example have terminal receiving cavities which are spaced apart by only about 0.025 inches or less and the terminals inserted into such cavities commonly will have a thickness of about 0.010 inches or less. It can readily be appreciated that the design of an insertion machine having reciprocating parts which is capable of inserting terminals of this size into cavities and which is in addition capable of high speed operation presents substantial difficulties to the machine designer.
The present invention is directed to the achievement of an improved feeding apparatus for feeding articles such as terminals in end to end strip form along a feed path and severing the leading article from the strip. The disclosed embodiment is particularly concerned with an apparatus for feeding terminals in strip form to an insertion zone in which the terminals are inserted into the cavities in a chip carrier socket housing.